Compiling a Bibliography: Practical Hints with Illustrative Examples Concerning the Collection, Recording, and Arrangement of Bibliographical Materials (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Compiling a Bibliography: Practical Hints With Illustrative Examples Concerning the Collection, Recording, and Arrangement of Bibliographical Materials

What do we mean when we make use of the term bibliography? As here understood, a bibliography is a record, in technical form, of all the literature known to exist upon any specific topic or subject.

"The object of Bibliography," says a writer, well qualified to define that object, "is to bring a book or set of books, in their absence, as much as possible before the student. A perfect bibliography would not only give a full and exact description of a book viewed as just a compound of paper and ink (measurements, number of pages, etc.;) but would also, as I hope we are agreed, set before the student so much of the life of a book as would give him, as far as the special object of the bibliography would allow, an idea of the correspondence of the title with the contents, of the plan and arrangement, of the circumstances of production - if they are noteworthy - and, roughly, of the place of the volume in the literature of its subject. This ideal, in which the author is recognized as having claims on our attention, as well as the printer, ought never to be lost sight of, and we should, if our scheme and powers allow us, never rest content with the technical description only." (Madan's "On method in bibliography.")

The compilation of a bibliography is a subject which may be considered from two points of view; the theoretical and the practical. From either standpoint it bristles with technicalities and difficulties and it is quite unlikely that what I may have to say upon it will prove of general interest. While it is true that it appeals to but few minds, it gives me great satisfaction to know that those for whom I am writing are both by experience and training most likely to belong to that small class of which I have just spoken. Some one may ask - why are not library catalogs sufficien…